Gwen Bbc Merlin - Tumblr Posts
Looove this 💕💕💕💕
Arthurian legend suffers from the same vague time mushiness that Shakespeare’s plays do - a midsummer nights dream starts with the Theseus and Hypollita from Greek Myth for Christ’s sake! But is sort of smooshed into a vaguely Elizabeth aesthetic more often than togas due to when it was written - similarly the vulgate cycle in the 1300s compressed all that came before (that was already anachronistic) into a vaguely contemporary vibe and then looking back everyone assumes that’s the canon vibe?
What I’m trying to say is the only canon interpretation of King Arthur following the themes set out by Middle Ages authors of making it contemporary and relevant to an audience is with phones and macdonalds drive throughs and King Arthur deciding to nuke the fens/sending in special ops because there were giants seen there commanded by his evil sister the Duchess of Norfolk.
Merlin is a Batman-esque vigilante whose day job is advising the king. There is no parliament but the knights of the Round Table are working to bring democracy to the realm in a The Thick of It style sit-com. Mordred is Malcom Tucker but also a Game of Thrones level threat to Arthur. The tone is all over the place. Gawain is caught by tabloids kissing a dude AND his wife. Galahad is a televangelist and runs a cult of personality. Lancelot is the Camilla to Guinevere’s Charles.
I redrew some Merlin characters to be more historically and culturally accurate! The text is their original names in a later Latin script, yoinked from a display in the Corinium Museum, Cirencester. (Sneaky edit to add: Y'all are incredibly welcome to use this in any way you want, I would love to see more of my home's culture being represented more accurately in media!!) (Also on Instagram)
Unlabelled version under the cut!!
Trying out some digital art and decided to start with Gwen from BBC Merlin
[digital art - krita]
Gwen and Lancelot that I drew for the lovely, @birdnoisesart
[click for better quality!]
[done on Krita]